Thursday, November 12, 2009

The Land of My Dreaming

The Indigenous peoples of Australia, the traditional aborigines, have a spiritual and historical legacy in what’s termed “the Dreaming.”This idea carries with it a sacrosanct respect for the history of the story that is the Dreaming.It wraps up the entire history of the people and their land, propelling forth the vision for the future.

The Dreaming is an infinite reality for the Indigenous Australian.

“Dreaming stories carry the truth from the past, together with the code for the Law, which operates in the present. Each story belongs to a long complex story. Some Dreaming stories discuss consequences and our future being.”[1]

Without broaching the complex issues of Indigenous spirituality, it’s clear that the Dreaming is integral to it.It’s almost as if the concept to the Dreaming is the truth behind not simply the Indigenous peoples’ spirituality, but everyone’s.

I think we can all identify with this sense of our own personal ‘dreaming.’I was raised from a young age in the North-west of Western Australia.I left as a young adult and then returned three years later for another period of five years.Then when I left for the last time I was happy probably never to return.I’d had enough of the isolation, the flies and the heat.

Yet, years later when I attained a job which involved travel to the area twice-yearly, I found a strange phenomenon occurred.

This place I revisited became for me a strangely spiritual place; a place where I’d look forward returning to.Certain sites were definitely sacred to me as I reflected deeply back to my childhood and succeeding formative years. I would visit these places quite solemnly.

I believe we all have a land of “dreaming.”This is a place that holds deep spiritual roots with the mystique of that unknown realm in our subconscious minds of wonder for a personal, vibrant, funnily-disconnected history.And we always want to reclaim and reconnect with it—if it’s not too painful.

It’s incumbent on us to find our way back there, and to find our way back into the lives of those we knew—to reconnect.These things are critical to the ongoing placement and significance of our identities; of tracking back to the real, innate “us.”